Essential Research: 54-46 to Labor

Labor roars back in the latest Essential poll, despite a slump in Bill Shorten’s personal ratings.

The latest fortnightly Essential Research poll sharply reverses a recent trend away from Labor, who are back to leading 54-46 on two-party preferred after their lead fell to 51-49 in the previous poll. This is apparently driven by a four point drop in the Coalition primary vote, but as usual we will have to wait until later today for the full numbers. However, it’s a curiously different story on leadership ratings, on which Malcolm Turnbull gains two on approval since last month to reach 42% while remaining steady on 42% disapproval, while Bill Shorten is down four to 33% and up five to 46%. Turnbull’s lead over Shorten as preferred prime minister is unchanged, shifting from 40-26 to 41-27. Like ReachTEL and unlike Newspoll, Essential has posed a straightforward question on company tax cuts that finds approval and disapproval tied on 37%. The poll also finds 68% support for an increase in Newstart.

UPDATE: Full results here. The Coalition primary vote crashes from 40% to 36%, Labor’s rises one to 37%, the Greens are steady on 10% and One Nation are steady on 8%.

UPDATE 2: Further details from those ReachTEL polls for Sky News, which were conducted last Wednesday. In the national poll, after allocating results from a forced response follow-up for the 5.1% undecided, the primary votes were Coalition 36.5%, Labor 35.3%, Greens 10.7%, One Nation 9.3% and others 8.2%, translating into a 52-48 lead for Labor after respondent-allocated preferences favoured them by 54.8-45.2. Malcolm Turnbull’s lead on the forced response preferred prime minister question was almost exactly unchanged at 54.6-45.4 (54.5-45.5 last month); his very good plus good rating went from 29.9% to 30.8%, and his poor plus very poor from 32.6% to 37.0%. Bill Shorten went from 28.4% to 27.7% on good plus very good, and from 35.5% to 39.9% on poor plus very poor.

In the poll for the Braddon by-election, after allocating the forced follow-up results from the 5.9% undecided, the primary votes were Liberal 48.2%, Labor 34.5%, Greens 6.6%, independents 7.2%, others 3.5%, resulting in a 54-46 Liberal lead on respondent-allocated two-party preferred. In Longman, with the 7.1% initially undecided likewise allocated, the results are Liberal National Party 40.4%, Labor 37.3%, independents 5.5%, Greens 2.7% and others 14.1% (confirming there was no specific option for One Nation), resulting in an LNP lead of 52-48. Respondents for these polls were asked how they would vote “if a by-election in the federal electorate of X were to be held today”. The by-election polls were conducted last Wednesday, from samples of 824 in Braddon and 810 in Longman; the national poll was conducted Wednesday and Thursday from a sample of 2523.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

2,057 comments on “Essential Research: 54-46 to Labor”

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  2. Anyone got the figures on how often Rebekha Sharkie has voted with the government in the Lower House, since she was elected?

  3. Malcolm might be inclined to promise a fistful of dollars to the voters of Mayo right now.

    He’s going to be a busy man between now and 28 July flitting between Mayo, Braddon and Longman offering all sorts of bribes.

  4. There’s more to politics than votes on the floor of the House.

    Every member represents resources for their party, membership of committees, a talking head on the news…

  5. I I RC Sharkie was one of lower house pushing for a Banks RC, also the bill on ending live sheep trade.
    It isn’t so much she is a moderate, but a reflection of how ideological the government is.

  6. http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2018/06/the-war-on-wedge-tailed-eagles

    “Retaining large patches of native vegetation that can support a diverse range of animals that offer alternative prey to livestock, such as kangaroos, possums and birds, is one way of solving these problems. We simply can’t clear all of the land, kill the kangaroos and rabbits, and expect these majestic eagles to eat dust.”

    Both Simon and Steve agree that putting an end the myth of eagles preying on livestock is key, but also public education about the role these eagles play as apex predators and the legal consequence of persecuting them.

  7. Diogenes @ #1689 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 2:23 pm

    Barney
    If Downer gets her arse handed to her on a plate by the good burghers of Mayo, there will be such an oversupply of Schadenfreude on PB that we’ll be able to dine out on it for months.

    I find it interesting that the initial response to her has been so negative.

    I didn’t think that many people watched the Drum!

    Obviously BK, S2K and other SA Bludgers have been out there singing her praise but …

    🙂

  8. IIRC, Georgina Downer previously had a tilt at preselection in the blue-ribbon Lib seat of Goldstein in Melbourne.

  9. I have a general question on poll accuracy. How long does a poll remain relevant? How quickly does the accuracy of what it measured decay? Does MOE decay? Is a poll conducted yesterday still relevant today? How about if it was conducted last week, or last month? (Really. This is only one question.)

    The reason for the question is that as far as I know a single poll spans a number of days, so the results coming in at the end of the polling period might be considered more relevant (more important) than the results obtained at the beginning. Can or should this be taken into account? (I also note that the election, which the poll is trying to predict, takes place on a single day, but that feels like a different issue.) But more interestingly (to me) is how you could combine multiple polls conducted in succession to reduce the margin of error of the meta-poll.

    I am prompted in this by the polls in Mayo, which I read aren’t individually very accurate but might, if consistently repeated, be claimed to be an accurate prediction.

    Perhaps its in the not-worth-the-extra-effort basket. 🙂

  11. http://www.rebekhasharkie.com.au/voting_record

    Voted very strongly against- increasing trade unions’ powers in the workplace.
    Voted very strongly for – implementing refugee and protection conventions.
    Voted very strongly for- increasing investment in renewable energy.
    Voted very strongly for- privatising government assets.
    Voted very strongly against- increasing Aboriginal land rights.
    Voted very strongly for- increasing funding for university education.
    Voted moderately against- decreasing availability of welfare payments.
    Voted very strongly for- increasing restrictions on gambling.

  12. Thank you boomy1 for that extensive outline of the Sharkie voting record. Looks to me like she votes pretty much as a small ‘l’ Liberal and a Wet.

    Thanks everyone else for your reflections. 🙂

  13. ItzaDream @ #4417 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 4:44 pm

    rhwombat
    Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 9:26 am
    Comment #1537

    Harking back to the New Yorker link, this

    “Regarding people as having lives of equal worth means recognizing each as having a common core of humanity. Without being open to their humanity, it is impossible to provide good care to people—to insure, for instance, that you’ve given them enough anesthetic before doing a procedure. To see their humanity, you must put yourself in their shoes. That requires a willingness to ask people what it’s like in those shoes. It requires curiosity about others and the world beyond your boarding zone.”

    is the stuff of tomes, empathy I mean, but what has been haunting me all day shines a light on the truth of it all, and it harks back to my earlier post on ‘Breaking The Silence’ and the rethinking of the occupation, that it is perfectly possible to be anti-occupation and be pro-Israel, and in fact make the case that being being pro-occupation is actually anti-Israel, which is what the young handsome ex-IDF explained so patiently, and in the process told this story, which I think was his awakening.

    He led a team in the ‘take-over’ of a strategically chosen Arab house, bursting in a 2am, the family in panic and fear, herded and intimidated and dominated into submission. He told of holding the father, now blindfolded and handcuffed, hard up against a wall. He was a physician. The men talked, father physician and youth soldier assailant. Led by the doctor, without anger or judgement, they spoke of the lack of humanity of what was happening, at that very moment.

    I’ve dwelt on this all day. I believe the doctor’s practised humanity is what helped him actually put himself into the soldiers’s shoes, and in that moment the miracle happened, and they joined, and the soldier saw himself in the Arab’s shoes, and he was changed.

    Amen.

  14. Itzadream@2:21pm
    My apologies for wasting your time with a typo. I was posting from my smart phone like now. Hence, I could not copy and paste my previous post.
    BTW, my focus was not Israel or Netanyahu. It was that video in that article. US got only 1 out of 15 UN security votes and Nikky Haley threatening by saying that she is taking the names of other members.

  15. Late Riser
    There was a big article in Nature Human Behaviour a few months ago looking at that. They looked at more than 30,000 polls and how predictive they were.
    1. Polls HAVE NOT become more unreliable recently
    2. The predictive power of a poll is much greater with increasing proximity to the election.
    I’m sure William can tell you more.

  16. The decision to standardise the New Intercity Fleet (and thus have to modify platforms/tunnels) is a good one.

    And its quite independent of where the trains are built.

    There’s lots of real and substantial issues regarding transport. Stuff like why are we continuing to spend tens of billions on motorways rather than fast trains.

    This bitching over the NIF is tedious and tendentious distraction.

  17. Late Riser @ #1707 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 2:52 pm

    I have a general question on poll accuracy. How long does a poll remain relevant? How quickly does the accuracy of what it measured decay? Does MOE decay? Is a poll conducted yesterday still relevant today? How about if it was conducted last week, or last month? (Really. This is only one question.)
    …

    A poll is a snap shot in time and we see the pollsters interpretation of what they have found by asking the questions.

    It has no predictive quality and remains relevant only to the moment it was calculated.

    The significance of this poll is that it is saying what another independent poll said so that lends weight to its results.

  21. Barney, I agree that a poll is meant to be a snapshot in time, though because it spans several days I need to think about the degree of “snapshotedness”. Also, if it has no predictive quality it seems like headlines “If the election were held today…” are somewhat misleading. Your other points, if subsequent polls add weight, how much weight? You might infer there was a retained value to the earlier poll. I suspect there’s more to this.

    Dio, thank you. If polls become more predictive the closer to the election they were taken then I could infer this is because their accuracy has degraded less than older polls. In other words polls do retain value though it decreases over time.

    Hmm.

    I was trained in physics and am familiar with the concept of half-life. I wonder if polls have a half-life?

  22. No doubt there are many factors in play influencing what the Polls are currently telling us.

    History tells us this was the case with Howard, with his paternalistic style finally annoying the majority aligned with issues from Iraq to the AWB to Children Overboard to WMD’s to Workchoices to the water crisis to 1.8 Million unemployed or under employed to debt burden to Aboriginal reconciliation to asylum seekers to prejudice against ethnic and religious groups to public education to the relentless fiscal squeezing of the States and to the shameless mendacity in high places, just for starters!

    Now we have the severe tightening of the age pension test by using the 7.8% taper rate, to changes to Superannuation rules to Maxsted from Westpac calling a Royal commission into banking as “dangerous” because of the signal it would send to global markets to energy prices and the increases of the last 5 years noting that there is application for 3 Import Terminals for Gas because it is cheaper to buy back our exported product than use our domestic supply, to the refusal to write down the value of the over investment and redundancy of poles and wires which is impacting on our electricity prices, to penalty rates and again the list goes on and on.

    Plus many of the issues voters tired of with Howard have been re-introduced.

    This is when government changes – and people like me become active, influencing others with specific presentation and reference to confirming data.

    So what we see with Retailers, Media and house prices as the end events of an economy where leverage has been the driver since 2000 (except for the period of the GFC impact).

    Then there is the ASX versus Global Equity Markets.

    So the government message is drowned out by statistics opposite to the government message.

    People become active on Forums such as this.

    Each with THEIR issue.

    The times have changed a bit, noting a response to me on Grollo.

    Many substantial businesses existed in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, well cultivated and well managed businesses headed by people who walked both sides of the political fence (noting where Hawke’s electorate was).

    With generational change, the next generation no longer live in the Thornbury’s or the Preston’s – they live even in New York and they do not walk both sides of the street as their forebears did.

    They associate exclusively with, support and fund the Conservative, neo-liberal cause.

    They are of different character to those they have succeeded which is most unfortunate.

    They also risk being called to account with incidents and responses impacting on public perceptions, and correctly so.

    They have changed the public perception by their persona and their actions and their responses

  23. Cud Chewer not logged in @ #1715 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 6:12 pm

    The decision to standardise the New Intercity Fleet (and thus have to modify platforms/tunnels) is a good one.

    And its quite independent of where the trains are built.

    There’s lots of real and substantial issues regarding transport. Stuff like why are we continuing to spend tens of billions on motorways rather than fast trains.

    This bitching over the NIF is tedious and tendentious distraction.

    Oh really?
    The way I read the article on the ABC website, the modifications to platforms and tunnels came as a complete surprise and had not been planned for or budgeted for.
    It also seemed to be saying the wheel gauge was wrong. How could this come about.

    If we are going to spend the money, why not spend it in Australia, like Victoria does with a Labor Govt?

  24. Itzadream@2:27pm
    Topic: MT wants to speak to the Vice chancellor of ANU about not accepting the grant
    MT has always been like that. Allegedly he was/is most interferring Communications Minister, the most inteferring PM.
    Imagine if a Labor PM interferring like that for not setting up a department on some leftist thing like marxism. I understand PMs and Ministers sometimes talk to newspaper editors or CEOs of big companies. But talking to a VC over a grant. That is taking it to ridiculous levels.
    BTW does any university in Australia has Department of Climate Science and IMO climate change is not that leftist dogma. It is one of the biggest threat to humanity. Climate change is like boiling a frog slowly in a container. It will eventually die if it is not taken out of that container

  25. I would have though academic independence was one of the foundations of western civilization and here we have the cultural warriors trying to undermine it.

    Is the Ramsay center efforts, peak irony, peak hypocrisy?

  26. Late Riser @ #1720 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 6:30 pm

    Barney, I agree that a poll is meant to be a snapshot in time, though because it spans several days I need to think about the degree of “snapshotedness”. Also, if it has no predictive quality it seems like headlines “If the election were held today…” are somewhat misleading. Your other points, if subsequent polls add weight, how much weight? You might infer there was a retained value to the earlier poll. I suspect there’s more to this.

    Dio, thank you. If polls become more predictive the closer to the election they were taken then I could infer this is because their accuracy has degraded less than older polls. In other words polls do retain value though it decreases over time.

    Hmm.

    I was trained in physics and am familiar with the concept of half-life. I wonder if polls have a half-life?

    Physical properties causing a half line do not change.
    Popular moods are subject to all manner of influence that can change them at varying rates.
    I think your suggestion is fatally flawed.

  31. Even if the trains were built in Australia its still a good idea not to have multiple structure gauges across the network.

  32. The train story from NSW reminds me of the old carpenters’ saying I heard: measure twice, cut once.

    Sounds like somebody stuffed up but politics being what it is there will be more spin than a Shane Warne leg break and most people will end up believing it was all part of the plan.

  33. Cud Chewer not logged in @ #1729 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 6:47 pm

    The mods to platforms/tunnels was well understood when the trains were tendered.

    I am in Victoria so not across NSW issues to the extent you would be.
    My pickup from that ABC article was that it came as a complete surprise.
    A similar thing happened in Victoria when they trialled a Tangara for a while. It got confined to one line where the modifications to platforms etc were made.

    I have for a long time wondered why many platforms have curved edges and in some case the whole platform is curved. This obviously makes it impossible to minimise the gap between train and platform. I also wonder why there isn’t a more standardised design or set of designs with such features as a roof the full length of the platform. Many stations in Victoria are archaic.

  35. Has there been any more Braddon and Longman polling?

    Late Riser @ #1719 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 3:30 pm

    Barney, I agree that a poll is meant to be a snapshot in time, though because it spans several days I need to think about the degree of “snapshotedness”. Also, if it has no predictive quality it seems like headlines “If the election were held today…” are somewhat misleading. Your other points, if subsequent polls add weight, how much weight? You might infer there was a retained value to the earlier poll. I suspect there’s more to this.

    Dio, thank you. If polls become more predictive the closer to the election they were taken then I could infer this is because their accuracy has degraded less than older polls. In other words polls do retain value though it decreases over time.

    Hmm.

    I was trained in physics and am familiar with the concept of half-life. I wonder if polls have a half-life?

    The polls paint a picture, just look at William’s charts, the more data points you have the clearer the picture becomes but they are independent events and William attempts to make sense of them for us.

    As for polls becoming more predictive as you get closer to an election, surely that is just a reflection those polls are sampling the opinions at a time close to polling day and with the election close at hand the undecided vote is shrinking so there is less guesswork in how they will split. 🙂

  36. rossmcg @ #1731 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 6:54 pm

    The train story from NSW reminds me of the old carpenters’ saying I heard: measure twice, cut once.

    Sounds like somebody stuffed up but politics being what it is there will be more spin than a Shane Warne leg break and most people will end up believing it was all part of the plan.

    All the more amazing when there are not all that many critical measurements that must be right.

  37. bemused @ #1724 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 6:38 pm

    Physical properties causing a half line do not change.
    Popular moods are subject to all manner of influence that can change them at varying rates.
    I think your suggestion is fatally flawed.

    OK. Maybe half-life is the wrong term. It is simplistic.

    I am still thinking about Dio’s comment that polls close to the election are more accurate. It makes sense because while change happens, the one constant is change, sometimes change is smooth, “the trend is your friend”, sometimes it isn’t, disruption occurs.

    William’s smooth curve through the cloud of dots is an implicit acceptance that polls can be combined over time and the smooth curve is the best “something” that can be gleaned. It feels like there is or should be an underlying statistical assumption for interpreting time behaviour. Maybe William’s curve is ‘merely’ a best fit of a cloud of points with a single smooth curve. Past polls influence the current value of William’s curve, and so can future polls affect the current value of the curve.

    Anyway, enough rambling. Thanks for the input. I think I need to think some more.

  38. “The train story from NSW reminds me of the old carpenters’ saying I heard: measure twice, cut once.

    Sounds like somebody stuffed up but politics being what it is there will be more spin than a Shane Warne leg break and most people will end up believing it was all part of the plan.”

    – It’s Labor’s fault.
    -Or Bill Shorten’s
    – Or “Union thugs”
    – Or maybe it was political correctness. Management was so preoccupied with geneder equity and non-discrimination that they forgot to specify that the carriages had to fit in the tunnels.
    – Or maybe because of high corporate tax they couldn’t spare funds to measure the tunnels.

  41. Track gauges are the width between tracks. Structure gauges define the space a train body fits through.

  42. Steve, its largely a beat up. As has many been many issues to do with trains in NSW.

    What its really about is miserable old men (there’s no way to put it politely) putting up a rear guard action against modernisation of the rail network.

  46. Pseudo Cud Chewer @ #1740 Friday, June 8th, 2018 – 7:23 pm

    Track gauges are the width between tracks. Structure gauges define the space a train body fits through.

    I learn so much on PB.
    I had never heard of Structure Gauge before.
    I would have expected it to be referred to as ‘clearance’ of some sort.

  48. There is much that is wrong with the NSW Government and their decision making processes, however part of the problems with the railways are a beat up or a real attempt to fix things.
    The carriage gauge issue was known, possibly the remediation work is going to take longer and cost more, but it mean wider tunnels and rail cuttings for future trains.
    Also the Sydney Bankstown line (as mentioned here) was a cause of problems in the Sydney system, so closing and putting it on a separate line is an improvement.

    Just don’t get me started on the stadia.

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